Cornish Mining in the St. Just District

In the 1890s the Great Western Railway operated a weekly train to Southampton calling at Redruth and Camborne to collect Cornish miners on the first stage of their journey to the gold and diamond mines of South Africa.  Cornish mining technology was among the most advanced in the world and Cornish mining engineers were in demand throughout the 19th. century.  In the same period, unemployed Cornish miners were recruited to work in Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, Brazil, United States and Canada, in step with fluctuations in the local labour market.  Copper and tin had been mined in Cornwall for centuries before the invention of steam power made it possible to access deposits via vertical shafts rather than by digging into hill sides.  Ancillary industries - steam engine building, pump and rock drill manufacturers, compressor and boiler producers flourished - mostly located in the Camborne and Redruth area where the major mines were concentrated.

When the great Cornish land owning families, the Bassets, Rashleighs, Boscawens, Treffrys, et al  invested in mineral extraction, the last thing on their minds was landscape value - they had quite enough of that on their secluded country estates.  While the majority of mines were to be found inland there were two clusters of mines along the north Cornish coast around St. Just and St. Agnes. The environmental damage inflicted on the landscape in a county widely celebrated for the rugged beauty of its dramatic coastline must have seemed especially egregious to the anti-industrial segment of Victorian opinion typified by John Ruskin. The legacy of all this can be seen today in the ruins of engine houses, chimney stacks and industrial buildings that cling to the granite cliff tops between St. Just and Zennor on the north facing coast of West Penwith where these photos were taken. 

Curiously, in accordance with another strand in Ruskin’s thinking - the need to conserve the past - these ruins have acquired new significance as powerful enhancements to the landscape. With the passage of time a new narrative has emerged and these sites have acquired a beauty of their own as well as bearing witness to past experience and endeavour.  They form a lens through which we can examine the working lives and culture of mining communities and the economic forces that brought the mines into existence. These photos are a record of the industrial relics that follow the coastline between Geevor Mine and Levant Mine.  Geevor was one of the very last Cornish mines to maintain production and continued investment in the 1980s but global economic conditions forced it to close in 1990.  Some of the associated infrastructure remains in place and forms the core of a museum exhibit under the broader umbrella of the UNESCO designated Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape. 

 

Essen Zollverein

One of the star attractions of the Route der Industriekultur (Industrial Heritage Trail) in the Ruhr is the Zeche Zollverein in Essen - a carefully preserved colliery and coking works designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2001. Coal mining on this site goes back to 1851 but the principal shaft and associated buildings date from 1932 and were designed by industrial architects Fritz Schupp and Martin Kremmer in a style that’s often described as Bauhaus, although the term Industrial Rationalism may be more accurate. In its rectilinear brick built forms and its symmetry it seems to have more in common with the functionality of Albert Kahn’s work in Detroit than with the formal purity of Mies van der Rohe although there is some affinity with the Fagus factory design of Walter Gropius. The massive forms of the pit head buildings with its trestle shaped winding gear and coal washery are handled with great confidence and contrasted with the angular presence of enclosed conveyor belts that criss cross the site. Highlights of the coking works include the skeletal remains of cooling towers and spectacular reflections of the coke ovens in the vast cooling reservoir.

In 1937 just under 7,000 workers were employed in the mine and coking works. Almost undamaged by the war, the Zollverein was Germany’s most productive coal mine in the 1950s, yet by the end of 1986 it was closed. Six years later the coking plant closed down after many decades converting waste gases into such delights as ammonia, tar and benzine. Local pride in the region’s industrial past inspired the city of Essen to acquire the site and transform it into a visitor attraction without compromising the ravages of industry - making it accessible while preserving its industrial character. Architects OMA with Rem Koolhaas delivered the masterplan which took a decade to implement, finally concluded in 2010. Included in the plan were museums of local industry and industrial design. It’s an extensive site and a thorough exploration could easily take all day for those with an appetite for the strange and wonderful forms of industrial processes. Those with deep pockets can assemble a scale model of the complex on a table top at home by shopping online at Minitrix and purchasing all 3 components.